WP-Cron Control

Description

This plugin allows you to take control over the execution of cron jobs. It’s mainly useful for sites that either don’t get enough comments to ensure a frequent execution of wp-cron or for sites where the execution of cron via regular methods can cause race conditions resulting in multiple execution of wp-cron at the same time. It can also help when you run into posts that missed their schedule.

This plugin implements a secret parameter and ensures that cron jobs are only executed when this parameter is existing.

Limitations

This plugin performs a remove_action( 'sanitize_comment_cookies', 'wp_cron' ); call in order to disable the spawning of new cron processes via the regular WordPress method. If wp_cron is hooked in an other action or called directly this might cause trouble.

Screenshots

Settings screen to enable/disable various features.

Installation

Install either via the WordPress.org plugin directory, or by uploading the files to your server.

Activate the Plugin and ensure that you enable the feature in the plugins’ settings screen

Follow the instructions on the plugins’ settings screen in order to set up a cron job that either calls php wp-cron-control.php http://blog.address secret_string or wget -q "http://blog.address/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron&secret_string"

If you like to have a global secret string you can define it in your wp-config.php by adding define( 'WP_CRON_CONTROL_SECRET', my_secret_string' );

FAQ

Installation Instructions

Install either via the WordPress.org plugin directory, or by uploading the files to your server.

Activate the Plugin and ensure that you enable the feature in the plugins’ settings screen

Follow the instructions on the plugins’ settings screen in order to set up a cron job that either calls php wp-cron-control.php http://blog.address secret_string or wget -q "http://blog.address/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron&secret_string"

If you like to have a global secret string you can define it in your wp-config.php by adding define( 'WP_CRON_CONTROL_SECRET', my_secret_string' );